Our friend Tammy Zo (Pollard) needs our support. She is homeless, and in grave danger of losing her belongings, many of which are cultural archives and work that she has created herself. The fact that she needs our support is a consequence of our culture’s failure to maintain mutual support networks independent of institutional channels, and failure to recognize the long arcs of creative people in our communities—especially women—and their support needs.
I have written about this before, and will continue to do so. In healthy societies, where everyone knows one another and recognizes everyone as valuable, care is a distributed function of the economy—not merely transactional. Child-rearing is a community responsibility, not isolated within a nuclear family. People who function as culture-bearers are supported by people who function as food processors, and tradespeople, and caregivers.
In our modern society, each person is expected to be their own provider, caregiver, support person, as well as generating some economic surplus to feed the institutional economy. This is not sustainable, especially for many culture-bearers, whose sensory and cognitive architecture is often arranged to process a specific field of knowledge in a very deep way. People that are wired to do specific work are often pushed into work environments that are hostile to their nervous systems, and the burden of adaptation is placed on the individual rather than the workplace.
Some creatives are able to find support through project management—grant writing, proposals, partnerships that enrich institutions while meeting the needs of the creative person. Some are able to work this particular landscape to meet their personal needs along with that of their work. Unfortunately, even in the best of times, these processes are not easy for someone to manage alone—again, I’m emphasizing this idea of distributed care. In our current economy, cultural institutions that thrived for decades are being shuttered due to lack of funding. Tammy’s situation is the downstream consequence of this cultural drought.
Certain people are the sensory apparatus of the community. What sounds like a personal cry for help is actually an alert to the larger processes that are happening around us. We have often been trained to dismiss people asking for help as irresponsible, as disorganized, as failing to manage resources.
But if we understand that funding for creative and cultural institutions is hemorrhaging right now, (I can provide receipts if you’re interested), we will understand that the suffering and dire straits of our creative friends in our communities is not a matter of personal failing, but of a lack of scaffolding—we haven’t built in the horizontal networks that support us when the vertical infrastructure evaporates.
And furthermore, the burden falls more cruelly on women creatives, who are expected to provide emotional labor for their communities, while still remaining legible in their creative pursuits—which often require long periods of gestation (artworks and cultural curation projects require no less expenditure of energy than children). Women who are struggling are often perceived with less sympathy and understanding than their male peers, as their need is read as a failure of a provider of emotional support to provide. This is an unspoken agreement that is devastating in reality. Many will not recognize it, but for many, it is just the way every day is organized.
At some point, it would be a good idea to set up community institutions to provide support to creatives in times of need. In the meantime, we need to recognize moments when individuals need our support, and do what we can. There are a number of ways to support our friend in her time of need.
- Tammy has a GoFundMe set up:
https://gofund.me/682f7220e - PayPal:
@tammyzopollard - Venmo:
@tammyzo - Access to stable housing (so important for creatives who need stability to collect their materials and thoughts)
- Personal storage space that is not time-limited and subject to seizure (this can be any secure, unused space—an attic, basement, outbuilding)
- Access to regular safe quiet space, independent of housing
- Access to restorative care, such as bodywork, massage, engaged conversation, body doubling, walking and movement partnership
- Access to arts and cultural funding through grant-writing for specific projects
- Access to nutrition
- Access to unstructured social time enjoying one’s surroundings and the simple joy of being together
Thanks for listening, and please consider how you can be an agent of support for the culture and bearers of the community, who define our values and identities.